Sunday, October 9, 2011

55/99: Angel Food Cake Base Recipe (Petit Fours)



The angel food cake base left room for creativity.  I don't have an angel food cake pan so the classic angel food cake was out of the question for me.  Then I discovered that the recipe is truly a base and makes only 1 cup of batter.  Since I didn't read ahead, I could only make 3 cups (I only had 3 eggs) of batter.

So with three cups of angel food cake and a sheet pan, I decided that petit fours were the only way to go.



Rose also gave the option of using some grated chocolate in the cake but for some reason when I think of petit fours, I think of little sugar cakes with no other distractions in them.  I know that lots of people put fruit and other flavors in petit fours but I've never had one of those.  So for now, I'm sticking with the old school type.

I felt like I was making a meringue the whole time I was making the batter. It basically is a meringue- egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar. Basically you just add some lemon juice and flour and it makes the cake.   When I put it in the pan, It was incredibly airy.  I almost felt like I wasn't doing it right because it was so meringue-y.

When it came out of the oven it was still a little strange to me.  It looked and felt like a giant marshmallow.

After letting it cool for awhile, I prepped it for the petit-four icing by cutting it into little squares.

And because I love Martha so much, I decided to use her petit four icing recipe.  It's here if you want to check it out.  It wasn't too difficult. All you do is melt everything together over the stove and then carefully pour the icing over the little cakes.  Martha says to double coat them but for some reason my icing was really thick so I decided to stick to one coat.

I was pretty skeptical of how these would turn out.  I felt that there was lots of room for error and so I was very pleasantly surprised when they tasted good.

Last week at Chic-Fil-A, the manager of the store called out my name and asked me to tell one of his friends about my blog.  His friend ended up being a policeman in town who was sitting at a table surrounded by cops.  I explained to the whole table what I was doing and then one asked if I was trying to sell them or something. Haha- no. But after explaining further they finally got the gist.  When I went to sit down, one of them came and asked if I had any pictures of the cakes.  I showed him and he was really impressed.  Of course when anyone compliments me on my cakes  I am immediately flattered so I promised them that I would bring them some cake one morning.  So on Saturday morning, I met them at chic-fil-a for breakfast with a big box of petit fours for the police staff room.  They seemed to really like them! Free cake, right?

So on the whole, I think it was a success.  They aren't exactly petit fours because they are made with angel food cake but they tasted pretty close. And I got the wonderful experience of meeting new friends too!

Rose's Heavenly Cakes
page 145

3 comments:

  1. My husband and I are in heaven. He keeps saying, "Like can we get one of these?" Then we looked at your gallery and he'd say, "I want that one. Wait. No, that one. Hold on, that one!"

    Ha!

    Best of luck. This is awesome!!!

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  2. Jane, great idea of making them into petit fours. They are so cute. I love the polka dot one :).

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  3. They look very cute and easy to make too. So basically AFC, cut into squares with pourable icing on top?

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